In the beginning there was a flower

Since this was our first project in casual game space, we wanted to create simple but addictive core puzzler game which would allow us to become present on major portals and to introduce ourselves to the audience. Well, you gotta start somewhere.

Gameplay idea

Simple casual game with nice art and music. Next requirement was to design the gameplay which would allow the player to enjoy the game for 10-20 minutes and be able to continue its game the day after without putting too much brain about its progress or latest savegame. After that, it was clear we wanted to make "coffie break" puzzler with something interesting in it.

Game mechanic

It was big challenge to create a game which would exploit well accepted 3-match style mechanic with new twist. When you're designing the game for casual gamers one thing you're paying attention to is user interface. User interface is extremly important here because it determines boundaries for the game mechanic. First, we wanted to avoid using keyboard, and there were no questions about it. We decided on using the mouse and to use only left and right mouse button. Middle mouse button was avoided, mainly because compatibility issues over various PC configurations. Not all users have 3-button mouse.

1st version of game mechanic

You have flower puzzles which are composed of 3 to 5 hexagon shaped tiles. Flower puzzles are stored in the container on the right part of the screen. There is a board composed of hexagon tiles which are generated using some kind of algorithm.

Player has to pick puzzle from the container on the right and try to match it somewhere on the board. Something what poped up first, was to allow user to pick flower puzzle in mouse cursor. That way it is more clear to the player that it has to do something with it. When you already have your puzzle in mouse cursor, you can do several things with it. First idea was to allow player to move the puzzle over the board and use mouse click to place the puzzle down on the board. It turned out that was completely wrong game mechanic. It made game so hard, almost impossible to play.

Here's why : You can place 1 puzzle and everything was fine, but sometimes it was already problem to place already second puzzle on the board, because first puzzle occupied some unique tiles which were required to solve that 2nd puzzle. Not to mention that 3rd puzzle was way to hard to place. So that kind of game machanic was actually narrowing player's possibility with each new move. THAT WAS VERY WRONG.

2nd version of game mechanic

Then we figured out, since we're already using hexagon shaped tiles, they have nice feature that it can be rotated and form same puzzle but with different orientation. We have discovered whole new dimension of the game by introducing this feature. Suddenly player was able to place 6 or 7 different puzzles on the board without problem. To introduce pattern rotating mechanic we had to spend left and right mouse clicks on it. And that was in collision with our basic and intuitive idea that player will use mouse click to place the puzzle on the board. Only exit from that corner was to make the game recognize when active puzzle is over the solution. Puzzle would slip in its spot by itself. That was win-win solution. Maybe... :) Further down you'll discover what happened after we put the game out for public testing.

How was Trash Can born ?

One day, I was testing the game in early prototype stage where you had to place 10 puzzles on the board. What was happening to me whole evening was, that I would stuck with puzzle number 5 or 6 because there were no solution for it. Hmmmm.....scratch, scratch....what to do.....well, let's dump current puzzle and make the game to generate replacement for me. Bingo ! That's how Trash Can was born.

About game modes

From the very beginning of the project there was a decision to make bunch of levels in 3 game modes. We tried to create 3 different modes for 3 different moods :)

Adventure mode

whole point was to introduce various flowers through out the game bit by bit and to let player enjoy in new visual experience. Since we wanted to give some meaning to each discovered flower, progress map in form of magic labyrinth was introduced. Game is clearly showing player's progress during the game using separate map screen. To make it little bit more adventurous and challenging we had to introduce timer. The way how timer ended up as huge fire flower was very cool idea from our lead artist.

Relaxed mode

no timer, that's biggest difference

Arcade mode

this is challenging mode, player has only 45 seconds to match only and always 3 puzzles from the container on the right. In first version we tested it with 30 seconds on timer and it was too hard.

Why is only adventure mode unlocked at the beginning ?

Heh, this is mainly business driven idea. Since this game is selling like shareware in "first try it then buy it" style, it was clear that we can't give whole game unlocked immediately. Instead, we split game progress in 3 phases. When player is done with adventure mode, as reward, it will get relaxed mode unlocked. Same goes for arcade mode. It is unlocked when player is done with relaxed mode.

Why 50 levels in each mode ? Well, you have to stop somewhere :) In general, core algorithm is able to generate levels infinetly, but we decided that 150 levels in total would provide enough gameplay time for the whole game. Not to mention, that each time you start the game levels are never the same. That's one more thing which makes replayability of the game being pretty high.

Butterflies on flowers

Have you noticed those butterflies covering flowers when you pause the game ? When I was thinking about the idea how to hide flowers when player is pausing the game, this was one of the first ideas which came to my mind : "why not butterflies?". We got lots of comments that this was very cool feature. Kudos to Lili, she made nice animations for butterflies. I'm glad you people liked it.

Art direction and flower theme

There are so many games on the market which are manipulating with gems or jewels that we really didn't want to make "just another gem game". That's how we decided for something colorful but appealing, and flower theme was right choice for us. If you ask me now, I think there are at least 5 other themes we might choose, but flowers were way to go. Interesting thing is actually how at the moment we started working on our project there were no flower themed games on the portals. There was only Plantasia as I can remember, but that was different style of the game. By the time our game was launched, there were approximately 3-4 other flower themed games which came out, almost at same time :) :) This means, we're either on good line of thinking, or many other studios figured out same thing : "hey, there's no flower themed games, let's make one". Same happened to us.

Music and sound effects

Few words from our composer Damjan : "Since the theme of the game was a mixture of medieval and fantasy, I went with a sure choice - orchestral tunes. Each of four tunes you can hear in game was carefully composed to suit the pace of the mode you are playing, and to help build the overall mood. Designing sound effects required a little more thinking - since Fire Flower is after all set in the middle age, I wanted sounds to remind player of something that already existed for a few hundred years, to make them organic and as real as possible. That's why all sounds used in this game have an "ancient" feel to them, like ticking of old grandfather's clock, breaking of pottery, gusting of wind... Simple yet effect approach which IMHO adds greatly to the player's experience and Fire Flowers's basic philosophy."

First public appearence

After we prepared public demo of the game, we were ready to hear what public has to say about the game. I would like to use this opportunity and thank once more to Juuso Hietalahti who made post on his web site www.gameproducer.net.

Feedback we got from the people :

- game board was too dark
- when you place your puzzle on the board, solution is not highlighted enough
- menus are slow
- player can not pause the game using ESC key
- most important feedback about core game mechanic was that player would start waving with puzzle over the board like crazy until the game wouldn't find solution.....

And that last comment was actually something we were aware, but we didn't have any idea how to resolve it. That's why we put the game on public test to see what kind of comments we're gonna get and we hoped we'll get idea how to deal with this game mechanic issue.

Listening to the public and re-iterating basic game mechanic

After we got enough feedback from the public we knew what to do. Hear what people want, and make the game they would like to play.

That's exactley what we did. And here's how we resolved the issues :

1),2) game board was too dark

Why ? : It was dark in first place, because the whole board is bit busy visualy. So to make some distinction between flowers which are solved and those which are still available we rendered board darker and solved flowers full bright. That's how player would be able to see the contrast and to know which flowers are still available. It turned out, if person can have such brightness settings on its monitor that it can get very hard to see the difference between used ond available flowers on the board.

Solution : Board is rendered much brighter. When player finds solution and puzzle slips on its spot, those flowers will start rotating and scaling. This animation trick actually made whole game more appealing. Now we had eye catchy visual effect which is constantly sending information to player which flower are still available.

3) menus were sped up

4) ESC is introduced to pause the game

5) problem with core mechanic

This was tough one, but it ended pretty good. Main problem was, that player would be moving its puzzle over the board, and game would fit solution as soon as puzzle is over first available solution. As result we had either player waving like crazy over the board or finding solution by accident while moving the puzzle over the board.

The result was : player has low control over finding solution, and almost no skill was required to beat the game.

Solution : It was so simple but so effective :) We introduced small delay between the moment puzzle is over the solution and the moment game would accept it as solution. What we got is, no more crazy waving, and player is now forced to develop skill to solve the puzzles.

Thanks once again to all the people who provided constructive feedback and helped with various ideas.

Thank You.

Conclusion

What else to say.

It was fun making this game. It is more fun seeing the game appearence on the web through various distribution channels. It drives us even more to continue with development of fun and innovative casual games.

Lately, we have some ideas for the sequel. It would be much different game mechanic. If any of you people out there have any suggestions or ideas what would you like to see in the sequel. Feel free to contact us and tell us about your ideas.

Sincerely,

Team Ocean Media